Java: Learning to Program with Robots

What is Robots?

• It’s a textbook.
• It’s software.
• It’s a gentle way to teach object-oriented programming that really is “objects first”.
• It’s an implementation of Rich Pattis’ Karel the Robot.
• It goes way beyond traditional implementations of Karel by targeting the entire introductory programming course, not just the first two weeks.
• It’s not just robots! Other examples include graphics, a credit card, a combination lock, graphing polynomials, input and output for a game of Connect4, an on-line telephone book, recordkeeping for Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and using classes from the Java library.

Announcements

2006-12-15

The Instructor's Manual is now complete and available from Course Technology.

2006-06-26

Updated the library with a few bug fixes and a new user interface to support lectures in Chapter 07. Updated the configuration file for Jacobe.

2006-02-14

Java: Learning to Program with Robots has been published by Course Technology.

2005-12-20

Improved installation instructions have been added for JCreator, jGRASP, and Dr. Java.

2005-08-23

The newest versions of the documentation and library have been posted to the dowload area. The new library requires Java 1.5. The documentation now includes running demos on the package overview page (the page displayed by default when looking at the documentation.)

2005-08-02

The newest versions of the documentation and library have been posted to the dowload area. The new library requires Java 1.5.

When the book is published by Thomson Course Technology the title will be revised slightly to Java: Learning to Program with Robots.

2005-07-14

A new version of the book has gone to press for use this Fall. There are significant changes in anticipation of the publication by Thomson Course Technology in the new year. If you plan to be using the new material, please e-mail bwbecker@learningwithrobots.com for details and an advance peek.

2005-06-16

I am pleased to announce that Robots will be published by Thomson Course Technology in February, 2006.

A new PDF of the entire book has been posted in Textbook-->Sample Chapters. It includes chapters 11 (Quality Software) and 13 (Graphical User Interfaces) for the first time.

2005-04-08

Posted a new zip file with the JavaDocs. The previous version was generated by version 1.5 of the javadoc tool. The result doesn't seem to work with JCreator's help function. These are generated by version 1.4.2 of the tool.

2005-01-17

Posted a sample chapter covering polymorphism, via both subclassing and interfaces. Updates to other chapters to include Java 5 collections and input/output classes and miscellaneous other additions.

2004-12-08

Released a new version of the library, focused mainly on clean-up issues. See the change history for more details. Added a new project, Hangman, in the "xtras" package. Replaced documentation to clean up odd line-breaks.

2004-11-01

New version of the library to fix a bug in becker.robots.CompositeIcon.

2004-10-18

New version of the library with various non-critical enhancements.

2004-08-30

New version of the library to make reading cities from a file more robust and enhance becker.util.Test.